8. Dance Like Your Pants Are On Fire...

After stuffing ourselves with Cevapi (pronounced chew-op-ay), garlicky Croatian sausages topped with raw onion on warm pita, we stared into the glass paneling of the member's only club.  Michelle, my full blooded Serbian-Croatian friend, came to Pittsburgh this weekend and aroused the one-eighth Croatian in me.  After conversing with the Euro-Mart cook earlier in a language incomprehensible to me, we stood outside Javor's Croatian Club on Pittsburgh's North Side and waited for someone to grant our entry inside.  We felt (and looked) like naive younger siblings of high schoolers as we tried to achieve entry into the weekend's exclusive party with beer and no parents.  Only this weekend, we were twenty-something, and our high school role models were really fifty, balding, Croatian and drank their beer generously and legally.  We took seats toward the door and tried to advert our eyes to the awkward glances we received from the regulars who wondered how we washed up on their private, Croatian shore.  And, of course, no awkward private party would be complete without live accordion-infused music and unintentional dancing.  

After an hour of uncomfortable gazing at the regulars, we were finally approached by a tall, white-haired and self-labeled German-Austrian and a pocket-sized Indian man, both who prided themselves on frequenting every ethnic music/dance hall around the city.  Upon learning that Michelle was familiar with traditional circular Croatian dance, they petitioned the band to pep up the tempo so we could "clear the cobwebs" from the dance floor.  And so as Michelle immediately blended in, Charles and I held hands, circled up and faked fancy footwork (painfully) as the regulars silently felt just as embarrassed for us as we did for ourselves.  

This weekend, I was reminded of how awkward it is to be conscious of the eyes that witness sloppy dancing.  And I wished that I could have adopted the innocence of my favorite middle school dancer of all...

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They swarm around him in a wide and powerful sphere.  A.’s forehead breeds small pools of smelly perspiration.  His body jolts like a rusty robot getting used to his hinges after a winter in the attic.  His usual pale cheeks scream emergency red.

“Should I save him?” I ask the teachers beside me.  We stand atop the bleachers and watch our students morph into humans.  They untuck their uniform polo shirts.  Some have even surrendered their belts.  This is against the rules, but they are happy and that is okay.  I envy the way they move—ratcheting and laffy taffying. 

“He’s fine.  He’s having fun.  Just leave him alone.”  I purse my lips together and dimple the creases of my mouth.  I worry about him like I worry about my grandmother.  Maybe he’ll have a stroke.  Or a heart attack.  Or maybe he’ll just drop dead.  But, more than fatal illnesses, I worry that they will laugh and that I will be there to witness it.

The kids continue to circle.  They clap to the beat of “Lean wit it Rock wit it.”  Black kids.  White kids.  A. plunges face first to the ground. 

“That’s it, he needs saving,” I declare.  I approach the group.  A humps the floor from his chest to his thighs and attempts the Worm.  His arms fail like a two-legged octopus.  His chin smacks the wooden floor on the down swing of his floor-maneuver.  I squeeze into the circle, amazed that these kids who once barely grazed my shoulders now tower over me.  The students around him clap and smile.  I honestly can’t believe it.

              I back off just a bit—calming my maternal instinct.  Eventually, A. curls up onto two feet and saunters right out of the circle.  Another song passes.  Then another.  And, through the dense smell of nachos and fizz of cold drinks, I watch him.  He doesn’t smile.  But, others do.  They are learning, as am I, that though he is strange, A. is just a little man who happens to like doing the Worm inside a circle at a school dance.